Sogakope (V/R), June 13, GNA - Ms Benedicta Seshie, South-Tongu District Director of the Ghana Health Service (GHS), has expressed worry over the increasing cases of pregnancy and abortion among girls between 10 to 14 years in the area.

She said in many cases the Department of Social Welfare had to foot the bills of the girls who are rushed to the health facilities and "this situation has overburdened the department". Ms Seshie who did not provide data, was addressing a workshop on Gender, Reproductive Health and the Domestic Violence (DV) Act, for a cross section of people including chiefs, opinion leaders, teachers and social workers at Sogakope in the Volta Region. The workshop organised by the International Federation of Women Lawyers (FIDA-Ghana) with support from UNFPA was replicated at Akatsi in the Akatsi District.

Ms Seshie noted that efforts to ensure gender parity, by raising the standards of women through education, was being threatened by teenage pregnancies which forced the victims out of school. She said national goals for quality reproductive and maternal health delivery were also being thwarted by poor roads, which made accessibility to medical care difficult. The workshops forms part of the FIDA-Ghana Project dubbed: "Community Legal Literacy and Human Rights Awareness Programme In Support of indigenes and Children." The project is going in the Central, Volta and Northern regions. The project which would bring to the fore socio-cultural practices undermining the rights of women and children, aims at improving the skills and willingness of community leadership at promoting gender relations, reproductive health rights and the DV Act and also empower and make women aware of their rights. Mr Bawa Faisal, FIDA-Ghana Project Co-ordinator said despite the significant socio-economic roles of women they are negated to the background, while cultural perception and practices continue to inhibit the implementation of all legislative reforms on women's rights including their right to own property. He said the FIDA Project would train community leadership as paralegals to help promote the enforcement of existing laws on women and children's rights, carry out advocacy roles, focusing on the protection of women against harmful local norms. Mr Moses Kakaw, South-Tongu District Director of the Department of Social Welfare said the stepping up of economic empowerment of women as an angle of the DV Act would greatly enhance the implementation of the law. Issues handled at the workshops were sex and gender, rights of women and younger children, adolescence reproduction, maternal and child health and the DV Act. 13 June 10